To die for a "holy" cause tends to make death a religion. The martyr tradition in Islam, sadly flourishing again, gets personal but also oddly abstract in Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now."

Two young, bright mechanics are chosen by a radical Palestinian group as suicide bombers. After ritual prep including a last supper, much goes wrong. Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) stumble through a crisis of zeal, facing questions they might better have asked before.

This pulls in the pretty pacifist daughter of a martyr, as frantic debates divide bursts of running and driving ("Watch it, or we'll be traffic martyrs!"). Bitterness makes crude, cruel politics, and the Israelis are awfully blithe about a pale, nervous, non-Jewish man in a funereal suit getting on a bus full of soldiers.

– DAVID ELLIOTT

"Paradise Now"
Rated PG-13; 1 hr. 30 min.

'Garcon Stupide': Gay sex steamer is fairly stupid

'Garcon Stupide" is Lionel Baier's French-Swiss film about a handsome stud who provokes the more educated woman he lives with, Marie (Natacha Koutchoumov), by prowling the Internet for gay pickups, followed by steamy all-out liaisons (AIDS unmentioned).

Baier flickers post-Godard tactics with time-jumps and street politics and erotic games. But tall, boyish Loic (Pierre Chatagny) is too much a statue even to be called stupid. The "wit" includes gay video porn up-tarted with classical music, a McDonald's product plug that turns snarky, and a cute publicity photo of Hitchcock above a dictionary piece on Hitler.

As the tale of a young man's growth is anemic, Chatagny models the role. Candid beef is the film's only ticket to travel, but even if that is your interest you might notice that Marie, finally sick of hunko, is by far the most interesting figure.